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Updated: May 8, 2025
Under the shelter of their snowy slopes we camped for the last time in the smoky tents of the Kamchatkan Koraks, ate for the last time from their wooden troughs, and bade good-by with little regret to the desolate steppes of the peninsula and to tent life with its wandering people.
They have forgotten that their fathers conquered all the Middle Kingdom and digged in yellow earth the Grand Canal on which the junks of the Chinese still ply. The sword has rusted fast in its sheath, and the Mongolian chiefs, whom the Chinese call vassals or dependent princes, encamp peacefully on the steppes under their eight bans. The Mongols are nomads.
and, passing the Alps and the Vistula, died in a tumultuous hymn of victory long hoped for, of joy long desired, of freedom long despaired of, in the cities of Italy, the valleys of Greece, the plains of Poland, and the Russian steppes.
They had generally been well treated, but the band with which they travelled had been in no hurry to reach the settlement, and had been carrying them at the rate of ten or twelve miles a day all over the great desolate steppes which lie south of the Anadyr River.
They sing it in chorus on the quays while hauling the cargo, they sing it in the factory, they chant on the weary, endless steppes, reaping the corn they may not eat. It is of the good time their masters are having, of the feastings and the merrymakings, of the laughter of the children, of the kisses of the lovers. But the last line of every verse is the same.
The sun-baked hills, brownish-green and lilac in the distance, with their quiet shadowy tones, the plain with the misty distance and, arched above them, the sky, which seems terribly deep and transparent in the steppes, where there are no woods or high hills, seemed now endless, petrified with dreariness. . . . How stifling and oppressive it was!
There were geese, too, kept in the yard; but the goose, as is well known, is a dignified and reasonable bird: Gerasim felt a respect for them, looked after them, and fed them; he was himself not unlike a gander of the steppes.
Conquest and administrative needs are spreading Russian over the steppes of Asia; the Arab merchant and the growth of Mahommedanism are importing Arabic far into the heart of Africa; the Chinaman is carrying his own monosyllables with him to California, Australia, Singapore. These tongues in future will divide the world between them. The German who leaves Germany becomes an Anglo-American.
The sky of a dull and leaden blue is faintly lighted by a sun without warmth, whose white disk, scarcely seen above the horizon, pales before the dazzling, brilliancy of the snow that covers, as far as the eyes can reach, the boundless steppes. To the North, this desert is bounded by a ragged coast, bristling with huge black rocks.
"There will be no need for you to trouble yourself further," says she. "Oh, no trouble, really.... But can it be, Matrona Fedorovna is so necessary to you?" "No," says she, "she is not necessary." "Then why won't you part with her to me?" "Because I don't choose to; I don't choose and that's all about it. I've already," says she, "given my orders: she is being sent to a village in the steppes."
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